Posted
by
CmdrTacoon Wednesday September 29, 2010 @12:09PM
from the run-for-your-lives dept.

bednarz writes "Pirating Android apps is a longstanding problem. But it seems to be getting worse, even as Google begins to respond much more aggressively. The dilemma: protecting developers' investments, and revenue stream, while keeping an open platform. Some have argued that piracy is rampant in those countries where the online Android Market is not yet available. But a recent KeyesLabs research project suggests that may not be true: 'Over the course of 90 days, the [KeyesLabs] app was installed a total of 8,659 times. Of those installations only 2,831 were legitimate purchases, representing an overall piracy rate of over 67%.... The largest contributor to piracy, by far, is the United States providing 4,054 or about 70% of all pirated installations...'"

(In Russia, almost all of the software sold is unlicensed (it has been like that at least several years ago). Given that Russia is a populous country, floods US and other developed countries w/ programmers and generally is a flourishing business, one can only assume that Russian software market cannot be dismissed during this assessment.)

I read the article and still have no idea how piracy rate is determined. Over at Keyslabs there is a writeup which covers licensing, but nothing showing how pirates are detected. Maybe it's to prevent the pirates from getting smart, but being closed about your statistics is worse than having no statistics at all. We have no way of validating the numbers against false positives so to counter I have embedded a script in this post which detects theft and have found that 95% of the people who read this are plagiarizing it for their own posts. There now we can all have statistics.

They probably have some part of their game that connects to a server to post scores, or some code that phones home. But most likely its a score posting and during that connection they get a unique ID for that phone so you can over write your best score. But if 8,659 people send in scores, but only 2,831 purchases were made, they can determine that most likely there is a 67% piracy rate for their application.
So, its a guess, but a very educated guess, and could actually be said to be the lowest their app is being pirated, in that it could be higher amount of people having it installed but are not phoning home.

(In Russia, almost all of the software sold is unlicensed (it has been like that at least several years ago). Given that Russia is a populous country, floods US and other developed countries w/ programmers and generally is a flourishing business, one can only assume that Russian software market cannot be dismissed during this assessment.)

The Android market place let's you refund any application within 24 hours of purchase. I wonder if they took that into account when they came up with their piracy statistics, although I'd have to assume they aren't that stupid.

Oh yes, because the core OS of a tiny device should be at least as bloated as Windows.
Oh, and everything should be free because magic pixies come along in the night and write the code for the developers, thus costing them nothing!

I'm not saying they should. What I *am* saying is that the "pirated app" numbers don't translate directly to anything else - not lost revenue, not even potential lost customers - some people pirate stuff just because they can, without even bothering to check first to see if it's something they might want.

Case in point - way back in the DOS days, a friend insisted I try simcity. I though the game concept was silly, but gave it a whirl. I went on to buy Simcity 2000, Simcity 3000 Deluxe, Simcity 4 + Rush hour, and Simcity for the Wii. I also bought a few other maxis games, all stemming from that one floppy.

However, if I had had to buy the original game first, none of those sales would have happened. Not one.

Some of us *do* want to reward publishers who produce good stuff - we just don't want to get sucked in by nice artwork and a bogus description that turns into an almost-immediate lunchbag letdown.

However, this also ignores the simple fact that most of the people who pirated an app wouldn't have shelled out money for it.

I'm actually not convinced of that when you start taking micropayments into account.

Sure, for a game that costs $15, a user who pirates it might be doing it to save some money, and with the pirated copy unavailable, would simply have not bought it. But when you're talking a couple bucks, I find it *far* less credible that users are turning to piracy because they can't afford the purchase, or don't see the product as having sufficient value to justify the price.

Are you going to buy something if you can't at least kick the tires first?

Eh, as has been pointed out many times, the android marketplace has a 24-hour refund period. Combine that with user reviews, and I'm sorry, the try-before-you-buy justification for piracy just doesn't hold water.

And let's be honest - a lot of these utilities should eventually make their way into the OS anyway.

I remember reading a blog post [2dboy.com] by 2D Boy, makers of World of Goo, that stated that they calculated a piracy rate of 90%. That's on an independent game, that only cost $15. It's a great game, and well worth the money. There's also absolutely no DRM on the game so there's no reason to assume that people are "pirating" because they need to get around copy protection for a game they already bought. They added corrections to the blog post, later, correcting the number to around 82%. So 67% doesn't seem all that bad in comparison.

Please note, I could not find where Schmidt said these exact words but there was some sentiment of this in his interview. And there's some truth to it.

Truth be told, I'm a little wary of applications on my Android based Motorola DROID. I have seen the skins apps and am curious how one maker gets licenses for Zelda, Minnesota Vikings, Justin Beiber and all other kinds of imagery when they sell these skins. This sort of questionable content makes me wonder what other questionable things are being engaged. Likewise, I'm also a little wary of a lot of the free games I play. One in particular is the Solitaire Free Pack [androlib.com] which, as it so turns out, I am a big fan of the ~40 variants of solitaire they offer. I also would like to use the Kindle application on my phone. There's just one problem: it wants my Amazon account login and password.

You know, it's not that I don't trust Android, Google or Amazon... it's the other apps I've unwittingly installed willy nilly on my phone while bored or drunk on the metro. You'll probably be able to assure me that there's no way another app could access the disk or memory space of the Kindle app but it just seems unsafe. I would not find iOS all that much more reassuring but I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in the paranoia of storing account information inside my phone -- or even repeatedly typing it in.

I don't have any proof that it's a real security issue and I hope apps somehow get very restricted memory and disk spaces but I think Google has a little further to go on security as well as offering developers a way to recoup losses. Since it'll undoubtedly be DRM like their early attempts [slashdot.org], I hope it's stressed to be opt-in and not advised.

The permissions listings are about as opaque as they come. I've some experience with the soft white underbelly of technology, so I can make a good guess about what a particular permission entails and why it might be necessary, but I still can't quite figure whether an app is actually secure or not. And for many apps the list is quite long - not exactly user friendly or convenient. If I (after 20+ years of experience with computer technology) can barely make heads nor tails of the permissions, heaven help the butcher/backer/candlestickmaker who just wants to feels safe when installing an app on their phone. And I have the SDK installed and can actually read the details.

In a word, the permissions listings tell a person fuck-all about whether an app is actually safe or not. With a few exceptions. Apps that require no special permissions or just a very few, rare though they are, give one some sense of confidence. Internet connection required for a stock ticker app? Ok, can't be much harm in that. I'll install. Beyond that, as the list of required permissions grow, the difficulty in evaluating the safety of an app grows exponentially. Access to SD storage, personal contacts list, state of phone, location, yada yada. Most apps seem to require most of these. Access to SD storage is needed for reading/writing personal settings, caching data and the like. Fine. But is access to other data on the SD card limited? I have no clue. As far as I can tell, once an app has access the SD card, a full wipe is possible. There is little information to suggest otherwise.

So basically, for apps that require a non-trivial list of permissions to function, one is left with trust in the developer as the only security. The rest is a roll of the dice.

To be honest, I think most people treat the list of permissions much as they treat an EULA: a list of incomprehensible gibberish that one must ignore to get to the actual goal (an installed app, in this case). It's in the Google market, so it must be safe, right? Click, click, install.

Android app permissions as a way to assess the safety of an app? You've got to be kidding. Epic fail.

If you release a binary, it will be copied. The very act of releasing it is tacit acknowledgement that you have given up absolute control over it. Companies that develop software should accept this and consider alternative income methods like support contracts and priority upgrade access.

As long as software companies think that their software has any monetary worth, they will continue to fight a losing battle to technology itself.

If you own a jewelry store, it will be robbed. the very act of owning a jewelry store is tacit acknowledgment that you accept being robbed. companies that sell jewelry should accept this and consider alternative income methods like polishing jewelry or beet farming.

as long as jewelry stores think that their jewelry has monetary worth, they will continue to fight a losing battle to gun technology itself.

Commercial software that gets pirated is useful by definition... otherwise it would not be pirated.Commercial software that gets pirated has no open source replacement of the same quality.. or people would simply use that instead.

So it is clearly not true that all useful software will be developed for free. This is the value of a commercial software market. By letting people copyright their work and sell licenses to use it, we as consumers have far more choices than we woul

> Commercial software that gets pirated is useful by definition... otherwise it would not be pirated

You underestimate the number of packrats with ADD -- users who have dozens and dozens of pirated apps installed... 99% of which they never use, and only keep around because having lots and lots of apps makes them happy. The trick to monetizing these users is to create an app that has two levels of piracy... an "easy" level of cracking that lets them feel like they got the real app, then a much harder level

Suppose you made something intangible and "infinitely reproducible", like an ebook or an android app. You sell it for $20.

Scenario 1:
I give you $20
I get a copy of the product

Scenario 2:
I get a copy of the product

The net difference between these two is that you don't get the $20 yet I still get the product. If I were not a potential customer to begin with (this has been discussed on/. before and I agree with it), then you reall

Exactly. There are a -lot- of ways to fund development, making an application, overpricing it, failing to maintain it, etc. will end in failure. If your software fills a needed niche, people will pay for it if you aren't a dick about it, but most software doesn't fill a needed niche. For example, I have no problems downloading the full versions of things like an NES emulator because the free version A) Wasn't very crippled (no save state support, I can live with that) B) Didn't have obnoxious ads that block

Thank you for your advice. Since I don't believe I can interest you in a support contract for my jump and run game, I'm going to plaster it with ads as an alternative source of income.

And many of the same people that claim that the reason for piracy is that the prices are too high will then download the hacked, ad-free version. Because the problem isn't anything to do with the software - the software is both desirable and desired. The problem is that once people have grown accustomed to the idea that they can get an unlimited amount of digital content for free, without the inconvenience of advertisements and without any real probability of legal consequences, it is almost impossible to get them to start paying again.

That's something I was contemplating... the app itself and the price its set at (as well as other factors) could dramatically affect these numbers.

For example, if adobe were to loosen their DRM system on say, elements, a very useful and respected app, and price it at $500 a license, the pirated vs legit licenses would be somewhere around 95%. OTOH if the app was priced at $10/license and kept its DRM, the rate would probably be somewhere around 5%. The piracy rate is a function of the DRM and and of the

Do they mention the price of the app, what the app did, where they phones in the US with US numbers, where they foreign phones in the US, did they see how long the users leaved the app installed after they pirated, did any of the pirates later purchase the app, how long they did the study, or anything else that might actually be useful information?

Translation: Did they give us any information that will give us any excuse to excuse the pirates?

This is not a fair statement. If the article had any facts to back up it's numbers then it would be a lot more believable. Just defending the article without questioning it is as bad as defending the pirates without looking at the cost to the developer. Lets agree to this: It's a bad article and proves nothing on it's own.

Well, pirating if you could pay is one thing, but the only method of paying for apps is Google Checkout which isn't available everywhere that Android phones are available. So, there's clearly something that I'm missing. A lot of people live in areas which don't allow you to pay for the apps even if you want to and have the money to do so.

App developers in other parts of the world, which Google doesn't allow to sell apps, have had to go to lengths to get around that by doing things like selling registrati

It's linked to your Google Checkout so you shouldn't be having that trouble. If you are, I'd suggest you contact Google. Personally, I have yet to have that problem with any of my Apps. Well, apart from the one which I purchased directly from the developer and had to manually input my registration info.

Google along with the developers need to make incentives for purchasing "legitimate" copies of Android software. For one, it doesn't have a great "gift card" mechanism, yes, you can register a gift card as a Google Checkout card and it does work, but it isn't as seamless as buying an iTunes giftcard, typing in the number and seeing your balance at all times. Secondly, there are a crapload of Android apps that are overpriced, you can't expect someone to pay for essentially a tech demo or utility. Markets like the Android market give people a large ego into thinking that people -should- pay $.99 for a few images and sounds it took you a few hours to find on Google then make a quick program to organize them. And number three, a lot of apps simply don't work. Unless there is a free version equivalent to all the features of the paid version, no one wants to spend even $.99 on something that doesn't work then deal with the hassle of returning the application.

The thing is though, hardware is certain (well, unless you have a PS3, then Sony disables half the features), I know what my phone can do when I buy it and its been reviewed thoroughly. On the other hand, I have no guarantee that that app will even run decently. And 24 hours isn't really enough to fully review most applications, what happens if an update breaks it? What happens if the game is only like 10 levels? Etc. all those things leave you a feeling of being ripped off, even if it was just for a small

It's *99 cents*, ffs. Read the user reviews, and if no one is complaining about anything relevant, buy the fuckin' thing. Honestly, people are willing to drop 5 bucks on a cup of coffee that a) is entirely transient, and b) could very well completely fucking suck, but apparently paying 99 cents for an app is just too darn risky...

wow, its.99. Your lunch probably costs 5x as much. The return policy gives you the ability to return apps that are really bad. If YOU don't think an app isn't worth the money then by all means don't buy them. I always find the opposite; good apps get released for free with no way besides annoying ads to monetize the developers for their work.

Funny, it always seemed to me that the "incentive" for buying a product was being able to use the product.

Secondly, there are a crapload of Android apps that are overpriced, you can't expect someone to pay for essentially a tech demo or utility

True. I expect people to not use those apps if there is no way to get a free trial. Why is this so difficult to do? If the developer isn't cooperating in making his app available, why not move on to another product? And if there is no other product, why not do without?

And number three, a lot of apps simply don't work. Unless there is a free version equivalent to all the features of the paid version, no one wants to spend even $.99 on something that doesn't work then deal with the hassle of returning the application.

This is subjective. I've received emails from people for my app on BB saying "it doesn't work". And that's true - it doesn't work for

Android Market apps are mostly super cheap. Who can't afford $1 on a game they'll play for a few days non-stop? Or a few bucks on a ROM management app? Prices for most paid apps are so low that I imagine that the largest barrier to entry is not price, but the effort required to set up one or more credit cards. My hypothesis, for that reason, is that a large portion of the piracy comes from the age 15-20 crowd who have fancy phones and lots of free time to figure out piracy options, but no credit card(s).

Google can greatly reduce this kind of piracy by working out pricing deals with the carriers to allow charges to appear on phone bills. How else would the ringtone industry thrive as it has? Verizon certainly doesn't offer a direct-bill Android Market option. Maybe this is already the case on other carriers? How does piracy compare in those cases?

Another annoyance of the Market is currency conversion. I've bought apps for sale in both Yen and Euros, and for those purchases I had to set up a Visa card since my AMEX didn't support foreign purchases (on the Market, at least). Most users don't want to deal with that kind of crap... again, piracy is easier. Can't Google Checkout handle currency conversion on the developer's end without hassling end-users?

Thank you for the information on the Verizon Android Market. I was thinking of getting an Android phone from them, thinking it would be like the store they have now. You buy the app, get charged on your bill.

If more carriers moved to that, I think the piracy numbers might go down.

"Google can greatly reduce this kind of piracy by working out pricing deals with the carriers to allow charges to appear on phone bills. How else would the ringtone industry thrive as it has? Verizon certainly doesn't offer a direct-bill Android Market option. Maybe this is already the case on other carriers? How does piracy compare in those cases?"

How is a ROM management app encouraging piracy?
I use Koush's ROM Manager to install (and keep up to date), my install of Cyanogen Mod for my droid. Where's the piracy? Cyanogen had an issue with Google a while back, but they've both come to a reconciliation that works well for both parties, and no piracy of google's apps are taking place.

It seems to come down to the inescapable fact that if you sell your code, it will be stolen and/or passed along to others. On the other hand, if you simpy put a paywall in front of your code and charge people for a subscription, you can avoid getting financially ass-raped by all of the cheap bastards out there.

When I was a kid heavily involved in the warez scene, I didn't really understand what the big deal was when people complained about piracy. Now that I work for a living and earn money using computers, I get it. Life is too short to go to work every day and crank out code, only to have it ripped off by some cheap bastard.

People seem to miss the fact that it takes time and effort to write code. If a person feels it isn't that difficult, they should do it themselves rather than steal from someone else. All of the defenses along the lines of, "It doesn't cost anything to reproduce, therefore it should be free for me." are a big fat load of crap. It amazes me how morally corrupt a good sized segment of our society is.

I find it difficult to believe that anyone has even stolen code from you...perhaps you mean copied? Lets be perfectly clear, so-called "piracy" is not stealing anything, it's violating a (theoretically) temporary monopoly that you've been granted by the government. Aside from that monopoly, you have absolutely nothing to do with two people copying data between their computers. You can argue that copyright protection is a necessary incentive to produce creative works in our society, but I don't believe---and a great many others agree with me---that those protections should extend to private copying in the digital era, and that stance does not make us "morally corrupt."

Consider this. I don't use proprietary software. I'll gladly pay for software, but not so long as the author is going to restrict what I'm allowed to do with it. So whatever software you may produce, am I not "stealing" just as much money from you by not using it as those who share it amongst themselves are by not paying you for it? Or are only some of the people who choose not to pay for your software "thieves," despite the fact that we all have exactly the same net effect on your pocketbook?

Well you can't have it both ways! Either you accept the copyright or you don't.

Oh sorry, I didn't realize that I wasn't allowed to hold nuanced opinions:/

Now, if you'll return to reality with me for a moment, you'll find that there are very few people out there asserting that copyright should be abolished, and I'm certainly not one of them. What I stated was that I think private copying should be legal under any circumstances...that does not include commercial distribution or the creation of derivative works, which are the keys to the GPL. I'm not stupid. I use and write GPL so

> GPL... What is it? It is law based on copyright! So if you are violating via piracy you are violating the GPL.One, the GPL is not a law. It's a software license.

Two, your argument doesn't make sense. Most piracy committed is noncommercial copying and redistribution. The GPL expressly permits this. If copyright law were amended to make noncommercial piracy legal, it wouldn't affect the GPL at all.

> Well you can't have it both ways! Either you accept the copyright or you don't.Yeah, that totally isn't

The reason the "digital segment of society" refuses to recognize that "intellectual property" isn't the same as regular property is that it is not, in fact, even remotely the same. You can make all the flawed analogies you want (heck, you can't even get in line with the normal trolls who want to analogize software as property, you seem to think that the thing you're trying to rationalize as if it were tangible property is best analogized as a service), but the bottom line is that software is not a physical product, and it is not a service in any conventional sense. It is completely and utterly different from any other economic product that mankind has ever produced. If you start your argument by trying to treat it as such, you're just showing your ignorance from the very start.

You do realize, don't you, that copyright infringement, theft, and theft of service are completely different, and that copyright infringement in most cases is not a criminal offense but a civil matter? If software is exactly the same as goods and services, then why is it subject to a completely separate set of rules and regulations? Do you really expect anyone to take you seriously when you can't demonstrate even a basic understanding of the way the law considers "intellectual property"?

Now, if you want to be sensible about this, you should try making some reasonable arguments about economic incentives to justify crippling the ability of society at large to copy data freely amongst themselves for the benefit of the smaller segment of society that produces that data in the first place. It helps if you refrain from making ridiculous analogies and calling everyone who disagrees with you an idiot...

Your mentality is a good example of what's wrong with copyright today. You appear to believe that because "it takes time and effort to write code," it follows that a developer should be paid for every single copy of his code that is produced by others, completely regardless of the fact that in the digital environment, copies are non-scarce, effectively making them worthless. There is nothing, except for tradition (which has been totally invalidated by modern technology), to connect the ideas that "software

I know I've seen blurbs indicating that software piracy on the iPhone/iPod (due to jailbreaks) is huge. Does anyone know if the problem is better or worse on one side of the fence?

Just reading the summary it comes across as something like "Android pirate's heaven (thus iPhone good for developers)", when I suspect the real case is "Android pirate's heaven (just like PC/Mac/iPhone)".

Thing is, you already mentioned why it's not as big of a deal on the iPhone... jailbreaking isn't something you see a whole lot of (tech media notwithstanding).

Most folks either don't know how to jailbreak an iPhone, or don't want to risk bricking the thing (and therefore blowing the $$$ they have tied up in phone and contract). Sure - you and I know it's fairly easy and safe to do, but Joe PhoneUser doesn't know that, and they have actual money tied up in the beastie before they even get it out of the box it came in.

Given this, the majority will buy the apps from the store. Now if jailbreaking were uber-common, then yeah - pirating apps would be just as common. Otherwise, overall? It's pretty self-evident that piracy is going to be an Android (and WinMo, and Symbian) thing.

From a developer's POV, yeah - the piracy rate w/ iPhones is going to be a lot lower, and therefore more lucrative for the dev. OTOH, the dev will miss out on folks trying the product out, and on any of the marketing bennies that piracy can give his products.

Piracy rate is meaningless. You can have a 0% piracy rate easily, just don't release your app. The only thing that matters is revenue. You're better off having 1000 paying customers and 1,000,000,000 pirates than you are having 100 customers and no pirates at all.

What about the ones that are lost sales though? Should they be ignored? What about the ethics of it? Should people enjoy the fruits of your labour for free when you've made it clear that you want to be paid for them?

This being/., I'm surprised the blurb doesn't rail against the developers' propriertary code and "closed" distribution scheme, and encourage them to make back their investment through "alternative revenue models", such as giving away the app for free and then selling t-shirts with its icon.

It's not piracy, it's an appallling refusal to give away one's work for free.

If pirating software is anything but an impossible endeavor for users, then it is going to happen.

If a solid revenue stream is your primary concern as a developer, and piracy is something that is keeping you up at night, then you should be making apps that cater to businesses instead of individual users.

If the platform is such that targeting anything but individual users is not feasible, then unless your app is extremely popular, it is a poor platform to use for generating revenue.

When will developers/artists/journalists/courts learn about supply and demand curves?

Number of pirated copies tells you about how many copies of your art/software you would sell (to people who pirate) if the price was $0 per copy.Number of sold items tells you how many you would sell at $x, the price that you actually sell your art/program for (to people who don't pirate).

At a price of $0 per copy, indeed thousands or millions of copies of software would be downloaded. But that says nothing about how many would be sold without piracy, when the price is greater than 0.

If I could have cars for $0, I'd have 50 cars in my driveway, one for every occasion. But that says nothing about how many cars I'd be willing to buy for $10000.Even without piracy you can see the same phenomenon:I have probably around 50 free apps installed on my android, but only 2 or 3 paid apps. You think that if developers stopped giving away apps for free I'd have 53 paid apps on my phone? No way! I'd probably have even less. All my paid apps are ones that I could testdrive and really liked. There are many paid apps that have no free version, and I never touched them.

Face it, piracy exists and will exist on every device no matter how much DRM you throw in it. Fact is, not every pirate is a customer. Even if your device is 100% piracy prove, you just won't magically see an explosion of customers. If they can't pirate, they don't use your app. Your customers will buy, but the 67% of the pirates will not. The 67% will just never use your app.

But if you block out the pirates you are going to block out any potential customer as well. Think of the pirated app as a free demo version. It will promote you, make your app more visible and people that have the money and want to buy stuff for their phone will buy your app.

Ask you one question, where would Microsoft be, if you absolutely cannot copy Windows or MS Office for free? What would be Russia, China, the Philippines, Malaysia, India, the students in Europe and USA and small office businesses using? Linux or OO.org? Now ask you, is a waterproof DRM scheme really in the interests of Microsoft? If you answer is No, why should be DRM in your interests?

These are people who looked up the app, saw that is cost TWO DOLLARS (the cost of one Red Bull! one subway ride! eight games of Galaga!), and instead of just clicking "Buy" and letting the app download and install itself automatically, did the cost/benefit analysis and decided it was worth their time to track down a pirated, unsupported, who-knows-what-additional-code-has-been-added version of the software and go through the added steps required to install it.

What? You're on slashdot, and don't understand that software can become necessary, and that some people might not be able to afford it? Here's a tip: you're in the information age, and this need is exactly why a lot of us donate software to the free software community.

I'd probably be an alcoholic in the slum I grew up in, if not dead, if it wasn't for free software (and yes, pirated software) giving me opportunities I never had otherwise. There

What? You're on slashdot, and don't understand that software can become necessary, and that some people might not be able to afford it? Here's a tip: you're in the information age, and this need is exactly why a lot of us donate software to the free software community.

While I agree with you that there is definitely good reasons for FOSS, and I am extremely appreciate of efforts of the FOSS community - we're not talking about the same problem. If you are already sporting an Android phone (where the phone costs ~$200 and the price per month is ~$70 - $120), you can afford a $1.00 app. It's not even close to the same situation.

Well, if I say, "You can afford a car, so you should be able to afford a house." That's obviously not true.

However, if you are buying an Android application, you are already assuming the cost of the phone and the monthly plan which you MUST have in order to own and use the phone. Therefore, you are already shelling out quite a bit of money. One more dollar is not going to break the ban

Your comparison of TPB to a library overlooks the fact that the library (each individual library system, actually) purchases/liscenses/contracts the content they lend. TPB finds someone else who has purchased/liscensed/contracted content and takes it without having contributed anything to the authors/owners who created it. They do this at a scale that dwarfs the content cycle of a single library system.

The assets of a library also come with limitations (return dates, access limitations, DRM, content expi

In the context of this discussion, it's very clear that he's saying that "if we don't have the money, we will pirate apps." Since the option to NOT pirate and NOT use the software always exists, he is clearly stating that he considers "living our lives" to only be possible through the use of these apps, be they pirated or purchased.

Thus the apps are the "means" by which he intends us to "live our lives". You and I both

What he said: "Hire Americans, and they can afford things. Otherwise, expect us to live our lives by any means necessary."

This statement was made in the context of an article about piracy of Android apps, and how many of the pirates appeared to be in the US. His response: If you don't want piracy, Americans need jobs. That way they will stop pirating.

He never mentions that it is possible to, you know, live without the apps, he clearly is stating that he considers them "fundamental," to living, and thus

Thus they PRESUME that person A is more productive than B, because A has more symbols of status than does B. As such A gets the job, and B does not.

Unless B occasionally jokes about threatening to call in the BSA drones after having learned of A's mass infringement.

(We presume it is their personal phone, not a company one.)

Jesus told his disciples: "Whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much." (Luke 16:10) So I guess those who pirate on a personal phone are more likely to to pirate on a business PC.

As for phone habits, I'm very close to the B in your story. Perhaps I keep my job because I'm in a small company, and I've saved the company money with open source.

(I have created presentation materials that have won multi million dollar contracts for my company. I really dont care about rubbing elbows or driving mazzarattis. I work second shift, and CHOSE it.)

Then you've disproven your own wild generalizations. You're a self-professed cube troll who isn't focused on your appearance, and yet... you still managed to win multi million dollar contracts. And you managed to get the opportunity to create the materials to win those contracts in the first place, showing tha

What a bunch of hand-waving, generalizing bullshit. Who runs around a corporate office showing off their new phone? And who the fuck gets excited over "Bob's new Android phone?" I've never seen it happen, and I work with a lot of gadget-loving IT guys.

They judge mostly by appearances, since that is what they know.

Yes... the problem is, in your example, Person A is the engineer who appears to run around the office showing off his new fart app and getting very little done, while person B is the engineer wh